


Virtue and Vengeance

by GeminiLoveCA



Series: Virtue [11]
Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Child Death (mention), Emotional Manipulation, Multi, Murder, Possession, Vengeful ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeminiLoveCA/pseuds/GeminiLoveCA
Summary: "Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd / Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."





	Virtue and Vengeance

The sudden cry weakened Lucille’s hold on me and I rushed from her form, my spirit knocking dust and leaves from the entry chandelier as I flew past. I did not reform until I stood before the sheet-draped cradle in the old nursery. 

Had I a true mortal form at that point, I believe I would have found myself violently ill, nerves causing my hands to pass through the sheet instead of pulling it away. Regardless, my incorporeal form met another and my heart exploded in black grief and agony. 

I could not hear their footfalls on the old staircase over the creak of the rocking chair, or my own humming. My sweet William. My innocent, tiny babe. Had I tears, I would have wept as my fingers played in his dark curls. How perfect he looked, as his wispy fingers curled tightly around my own, the only outward sign of his cause of death the faint blue tinge on his face. Memories assailed me at the sight. Memories I had pushed away, or forgotten as death wiped over my mind as easily as a school slate. Reliving his death and my own was my undoing.

I looked up at the soft gasp from the doorway, and the sight of Thomas, my Thomas, my SIR, with another woman cradled in his arms, comforting her instead of me, after all I had…

Rage. 

Hate. 

Undying, eternal emnity settled over my mind, turning my vision to nothing save shades of red and black. If William and I were condemned to wander these festering, rotten halls for eternity, then they would know my pain as their own. 

Let them see. Let them see it all. Let them see what their family had done… 

I shed the vain pretence of life I had worn previously, my apparition as it had looked at my death: caved skull dripping spectral blood on the carpet at my feet, twisted limbs barely holding me upright. Their expressions of shock and horror gave me a surge of satisfaction. 

I saw their breaths as I drew in every bit of vital energy I could, the room growing deathly cold, cold as my unbeating heart. I took the form I knew my remains now took: a rotten collection of bones, dripping mud and slime, barely recognizable as human, upon which a ghastly broken skull sat, accusing them with its remaining eye socket.

William had disappeared from my arms. Even after my death, my murder, she had done me further indignity, not even allowing me to hold my son in our eternal torment. That calumnious, defiler.. that highbrowed viper… had found one last final indignity to inflict. She buried William elsewhere, a location not even I knew.

Lady Beatrice Sharpe had taken all from me, in life and in death, and I would repay her treachery measure for measure.

***

One would think madness of this sort leads to a muddling of the thoughts. In truth, I found my mind, my own remaining resource, to be of absolute clarity, perhaps even greater than I had known in mortal life. Deviling the household gave me such delight. 

Polly was the first to run off, eyes ringed in dark hollows and tear-stained, after too many nights spent sleepless as I let my voice echo from the nursery - humming to William’s tiny, uneasy spirit. Cook went next, citing some urgent need to be at her daughter’s home for the impending birth of her first grandchild. One by one, the staff fled, leaving my enemies to my tender mercies. 

Samson, though, he was a stubborn one. His loyalty to his master knew no bounds, even now. In the end, his unwavering determination necessitated his demise. I took pleasure in it, a delightful revenge for all his sights and hurts, but it paled to the ecstacy of Thomas and Edith’s discovery of his remains, after the fire in the barn exhausted itself of fuel. There he lay among the few standing charred timbers; blackened, twisted, the heat having contracted his large frame into a twisted husk, remnants of his beloved buggy whip knotted around his throat. He was the last: his death left the trio alone, isolated in the mouldering expanse atop the hill.

Winter came as it always did to Crimson Peak, the swirling white snow hiding so many sins, until a bootstep in the wrong place caused them to seep through like bloodstains on a marital bed. The isolation, the sleepless nights, the hunger, led to bursts of temper and tears, as they took to unleashing on each other the emotions they could no longer settle on me.

I reveled in it. With their supply of food and drink growing smaller, they could not afford to waste any, and thus made it so easy to continue now to poison them all.  
Yet, still, they tried to rid themselves of me, dragging weakened forms hither and yon over the estate, desperate to find the location of my final repose. 

I almost gave myself away, laughing as they stumbled upon it finally. The sight of Thomas struggling out of the icy discharge pond over and over, dumping my bones on the water’s edge, only to go back in with blue lips and ice forming in the ends of his dripping hair, Edith and Lucille both protesting he would catch his death if he did not stop… He refused, not until he had found every last one and set the heap ablaze with kerosene.

Their rest that night, the sleep of the truly and utterly exhausted, gave me my opportunity at last. Lucille put up no defense when I entered her room and lay down upon her body, taking it over as I had so many times before. She sighed, her slumbering mind accepting my control as if it were no more than a dream. 

***

Perhaps Lucille thought our sojourn to the piano was just a bit of somnabulism, because her skill at the keys bled over to me, allowing me to play a familiar lullaby with some ability. I wished I could have played this, in life, for my little Will, but alas… this would have to do. The sound roused Edith, and I ignored her until I felt her standing at our back. “I woke you.”

She shuffled over to the bench, wrapped in her dressing gown, and sat down next to us. “I expected us all to sleep well tonight. Finally. Are you still troubled?”

“I pity her. Virtue came into the nursery to see Mother murder her child. She smothered the boy in his cradle and then bashed her head in with a piece of statuary when she cried out.” We turned to give her a glance, our fingers still playing over the stained ivory keys. Edith’s look was one of shock, perhaps more from the toneless voice with which this information had been relayed. “The secrets one learns when a body is shared. I saw it all, as if it happened to me directly. I even remember the feel of her hands on my back as she pushed me down the stairs.”

“How… horrible. And then to have her spirit trapped here… and the child’s.” She rubbed her arms through the heavy fabric, as if to ward off the thought as easily as a chill wind.

I reached up to finger the edge of the material. “This is far too light for the weather here. I have something more suitable up in my room. Come up and I’ll get it for you." 

"That’s too kind. I know-” She drew a breath and exhaled slowly. “I know we did not get on initially, but I hope now.. after all this… we might see each other in a more sisterly light.”

“Oh, I’m certain tonight will be the quite the turning point in our relationship.”


End file.
